***Please note, all links on this page may contain materials that are illegal outside of the United States. Be aware of the laws in your own country regarding lolicon before visiting them.***

I like Lolicon, and I think that given the kinds of stories that I write, that should only be natural. Lolicon is a Japanese portmanteau of the words 'Lolita' and 'complex,' and refers to a person who has an attraction to young girls. In a more broader sense, thanks to the Internet, it refers to anime or manga in which children are put into sexual situations. This generally means anything from gradeschoolers up to preteens, as anything younger than that is termed 'toddlercon' and I don't go there at all. No thank you.

At the moment, Lolicon is perfectly legal in the United States, as it depicts fictional children, not real children, similar to how the stories that I write depict fictional children, not real children in what would be otherwise illegal situations. As a result, a lolicon image is essentially a legal substitute for illegal child pornography, and as you might suspect, that's a tad controversial. A quick check of Wikipedia shows that lolicon is illegal in Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. There have been attempts to ban it in the United States, but they have been ruled as unconstitutionally limiting freedom of expression. Proponents of a ban on lolicon may cite the conviction of Dwight Whorley in 2005 as being proof that lolicon is illegal in the United States, but often they fail to mention that he was caught with real child porn, and that his possession of lolicon was used to trump up the charges against him.

I personally feel that lolicon is the cure for the child pornography problem. As a purely fictional medium, it can tell a range of stories from consensual sex to nonconsensual to incestuous encounters to a boy and a girl just exploring each other. Child porn images don't tell a story, and you'll never really know if the subject was forced into it, or if they were a willing participant. If you think about all the literary and artistic representations of underage sex through the years, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Brooke Shields' role in Pretty Baby, they tell stories. You understand why the underage characters depicted are engaged in sexual behavior, even if you might not agree with it, and you can either take it as artistic social commentary, or as something to get off to. Child porn has no artistic value, and that makes it exploitive of the child.

Kodomo no Jikan (A Child's Time) is perhaps the best well known example of non-pornographic lolicon. The story focuses on Rin Kokonoe, a precocious 3rd grader who takes great joy in sexually harassing her young male teacher, Daisuke Aoki. On the face of it, it sounds like a story that simply panders to perverts with sight gags such as Rin taking off her underwear in the middle of class and spreading her legs for Daisuke to see, or Rin's calligraphy art that bluntly states "please ejaculate inside me." While that's all good and titillating, the fact remains that Daisuke never once takes advantage of the situation, and as the story has progressed, it becomes clear that there is some deeper psychological meaning to Rin's behavior. Issues such as bullying (which is absolutely rampant in Japan) and sexual abuse are raised throughout the story. KnJ was due for a translated release in North America until the licensing company actually bothered to sit down and read the dang thing, at which point they cancelled it. Scanned translations are available towards the end of each month from SaHa.

Naisho no Tsubomi (Tsubomi's Secret) is a sexual education manga designed for young girls. The title character, Tsubomi Tachibana is entering the 5th grade and soon finds herself in a collision course with puberty and all the strange changes and feelings that go along with it. The stories deal with her mother's troubled pregnancy, her first period, and body issues among both her and her friends. Although the targeted group for this manga is young girls, the subject matter also appeals to lolicons for the obvious reasons. The first volume is straight forward educational material, while the 2nd volume is a bit more...zany involving space aliens as well as the puberty issues. Eighteen chapters of scanned translations are available online.

Koikaze (Wind of Love) is what I would consider lolicon because the female lead (age 15) is younger than the male lead (27)...who happens to be her older brother. Koishiro and his younger sister Nanoka were separated 13 years earlier when their parents divorced. They meet by chance at an amusement park without recognizing who the other is and a mutual attraction develops almost instantly between them. They are stunned to discover their true relationship when they call the same man dad. Nanoka moves in with her father and brother so that she can attend school nearby. Incest themes persist throughout the story. Complete 5 volumes of scanned translations are available online, and a 13 episode anime series is available subtitled and dubbed in English on DVD in North America.

Moetan is a series of English language study guides published in Japan. They follow the exploits of Ink Nijihara who, despite her age of 17, has the outward physical appearance of a 10-year old. With the help of a magician trapped in the form of a duck, she transforms into the magical hero Pastel Ink in order to tutor her nextdoor neighbor and love interest, Nao-kun. The study guides in this series contain laughably bad English phrases, such as "My ultimate weapon is the China cannon attached to my groin," and "He had no income, so he stopped his hunger by eating mushrooms which were growing on his underpants in the closet." Despite the poor grammatical quality of the study guides, they were popular enough that a 13-episode anime series was produced in 2007. The series is full of instances of near-nudity of Ink and her friends, nearly all of which are also 17-years old, but have the bodies of pre-pubescent girls. Their lack of physical development is the subject of most of the show's jokes and visual gags. The anime series is not available commercially in North America.